Without Atlantis
by Scheherazade's Daughter
Summary: Without Atlantis, who is she? She has food, water, and a roof over her head, but it takes more than that to keep a person alive. An exploration of the effects of social isolation. Weir whump, with some slight Sparky at the end.


**Author's note:** This piece contains a trigger warning for self-injury.

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><p>The mission shouldn't have gone the way it did. It was supposed to be a simple diplomatic endeavor, negotiating an exchange of resources and technology with the people of P3X-677. No one was supposed to get hurt.<p>

They were an odd race, the Xanites. Like the Genii, they lived deep underground to avoid being culled by the Wraith, and it seemed to work. The last time the Wraith had come was over a century ago, allowing the Xanites to expand as a society and make great technological advances. The people were kind and cordial, and all seemed content with their lives. But there was something … distant about them. They never smiled, nor did they call each other by name, and they all dressed, looked, and acted so similar that at times it was hard to tell them apart.

When they met Dr. Elizabeth Weir and the rest of SGA-1, they were confused, even repulsed, by many of their customs, from McKay's curiosity about their technology to Ronon's hair. One man reacted in horror upon seeing Sheppard pat Elizabeth's shoulder, saying that people in their society never touched each other.

"Not even a handshake?" Sheppard asked, demonstrating one-handedly.

"Goodness no," the man replied. "It is improper. We ask that you not do that while you are here."

Violence also confused them, which Elizabeth could sympathize with. It had always confused her as well. No matter how she looked at it, she could never see how people could willingly blow each other to pieces over something as trivial as where to draw the border of a country. Hoping to find common ground with these strange people, she told them that she too abhorred violence, and that the reason she'd gone into political science was to help people with opposing viewpoints work out their differences peacefully. But the Xanites didn't understand opposing viewpoints any more than they did violence.

"Surely one must be wrong," they insisted. "There can be only one right way to govern a country. Why do you not simply re-educate the party that is in error?"

It wasn't just disagreement; the Xanites had no understanding of love or adventure or curiosity or sadness or taking risks, saying that it disrupted their society. They lived in perfect, whitewashed harmony with each other, but they had only achieved it by bleaching the individuality out of their citizens and the variety out of their lives. Each person was exactly like the one next to them, and each day was exactly like the one before.

The negotiations hadn't gone anywhere, she suspected in no small part due to their cultural differences, and eventually Elizabeth and the team abandoned their hopes of a resource exchange. Resignedly, they dialed the gate, watched the event horizon stabilize, and began filing through, with Sheppard taking point and Elizabeth bringing up the rear. Just as she was about to place her foot through the shimmering blue event horizon, it vanished with a strangled choking noise. Startled, she stumbled through an empty ring.

The Stargate had malfunctioned, they told her. One of the control crystals blew, and there was no way to fix it. No way back to Atlantis. There was nothing she could do until someone sent the _Daedalus_ to come pick her up. Nothing she could do but wait.

The Xanites were as sympathetic as they were able. They gave her a place to stay, clothes to wear, food to eat, until her people could come for her. But the days began turning into weeks, and there was no sign of the _Daedalus_. Seeing that she might be with them a while, the Xanites gave her a job at the city office overseeing a team of researchers. Told her she'd be happy here, that she'd enjoy living with them, that Xanos would be her new home.

They were wrong. Xanos was cold, impersonal, utterly devoid of anything human. It could never be her home. Everything was drab and utilitarian, with no color or variety. Her apartment had a bed, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a desk, all in various dull shades of white and gray. She attempted to procure decorations of some sort, but found that the Xanites had no concept of beauty and aesthetics. They didn't have art or novels or music. Her supervisor at work even chastised her one morning for humming.

"It is disruptive," he explained, not making eye contact. "We strive to keep our work environment clean and quiet. Those odd sounds you make distract other workers."

She tried to make friends, both with people from the city office and her neighbors, only to discover that Xanites did not socialize. They didn't go out for drinks after work or invite each other over for Sunday dinner. In fact, they hardly talked to each other unless it was work-related. They rarely even used first names; no one had called her Elizabeth since Sheppard and the others left; it was always "Section Supervisor."

It was bearable at first, especially since Elizabeth knew that the _Daedalus_ would arrive for her soon. But as the weeks dragged on with no word from Atlantis, she began to wonder if they were coming after all. Any number of things could have happened, from a Wraith attack to a hyperdrive malfunction. With each passing day, she was less certain that she would ever get off this cold, distant world.

And she was beginning to feel very acutely the lack of human connection, a new, indescribable sort of hunger she'd never experienced before. The loneliness hit her in waves as she sat at her desk at work or lay in bed in her apartment, a new and strange kind of pain. Sometimes she was so desperate for company that she called one of the researchers she oversaw to her office and asked a bunch of meaningless questions about their latest projects, just to hear a human voice. Once, she even had the odd impulse to go up to one of her coworkers and just hug the woman, to feel the warmth of human skin in her arms, rest her head against someone's shoulder. It occurred to her that no one had touched her since Sheppard patted her shoulder the day she arrived. And no one had hugged her since … she couldn't remember.

And she missed Atlantis terribly, so much that it hurt. She missed the bright colors of the outdoors, the sound of the ocean waves crashing against the city. She missed Sheppard's dry wit and Teyla's kindness; even Rodney's complaining would have been music to her ears. She missed the heavy stomping sound of the gate dialing, and the mighty swoosh as it activated. She missed the smell of the salt water that seemed to permeate every corner of the city, even the infirmary. She missed Carson Beckett, and the way he called her "love" and offered a friendly ear when she couldn't sleep at night. She missed the familiar weight of her radio in her ear, the rough fabric of her expedition jumpsuit, the heaviness of her winter quilt. She missed doing meaningful work, supervising an expedition instead of a research team. She felt empty, hollow, as though she were missing some essential part of herself.

Without Atlantis, who was she?

It became difficult to eat. The food was bland and tasteless, and Elizabeth had no appetite. Sometimes she could force-feed herself breakfast, putting spoonful after spoonful of mush into her mouth and making herself swallow until the bowl was empty. Most days, she didn't have the energy, so she simply skipped breakfast and went straight to work. During her lunch hour in the cafeteria, she always sat at a crowded table, staring at her empty tray, hoping someone would look at her with concern and ask why she wasn't eating, would put a hand on her shoulder and sternly tell her that she needed to take care of herself, just like Carson would. But no one ever did.

She couldn't sleep more than a few hours a night, either. Lying down, with nothing but silence surrounding her, all she could hear was the beating of her own heart, thumping against her ribcage, sending pulses through her body all the way to the tips of her fingers. It was more than a little unsettling, and Elizabeth thought it was quite strange to be kept awake by the beating of your own heart. She began talking to herself during those long, sleepless nights, pretending she was her mother, or Sheppard, or Carson. The Scottish accent she attempted sounded horrible, and it occurred to her that under any other circumstances, she would have laughed. Biting back tears, she hugged herself tightly and imagined it was someone else, rubbed at her skin until it was raw from friction burns, anything to calm the pounding in her chest.

The work she did at the city office was relatively easy; despite her title of Section Supervisor, it was largely administrative, filing reports, sending memos, approving or denying requests for more resources. It was mostly things she could do automatically, and required very little mental effort. That was fortunate, because she'd been having trouble remembering things lately. She would find herself needing to re-read the daily reports because she'd forgotten what she'd read three pages ago, or go to clock out for her lunch break only to find that she'd already taken it. Once, she found herself in an alleyway a few blocks from her apartment with no memory of how she got there. That scared her.

As she was sitting in her office one day, her heart began to race, worse than usual, and she felt ants crawling all over her skin. Her chest constricted, and she couldn't stop hyperventilating. She'd had panic attacks before, in high school and college mostly, and a few since arriving in Atlantis. The last time, she'd gone out onto the balcony and taken deep, regular breaths until she felt better, letting the sound of the ocean and the hum of the city serve as her tranquilizer. John Sheppard had come by and they'd talked for a while, and then he'd given her a hug and told her to go see Carson if it ever became worse.

This time, she hyperventilated until she passed out. The Xanite doctors never touched her, just prodded her with cold metal instruments and stuck her with thick, dull needles, only speaking directly to her once. They started her on some sort of medication that made her feel odd and sluggish. She stopped taking it after a few days because she didn't like medication on principle, and it couldn't fix what was wrong with her anyway. The withdrawal made her nauseated and gave her a headache so fierce she had to miss work, but she didn't care. In fact, she liked it. She was lonely, and the pain was good company. She imagined her mother sitting next to her and stroking her hair, telling her that everything would be all right, the way she had when Elizabeth was sick as a child.

She still couldn't sleep, and she was lucky to eat a few mouthfuls of food a day. She began taking walks at night, wandering the city, often getting lost since all the buildings looked the same and the lighting wasn't very good underground. But somehow she felt less alone on an empty street than in the middle of the crowded cafeteria at work, and found the hush of the city at night oddly comforting.

The next morning, Elizabeth shook her head, trying to clear away all the cobwebs. Her joints ached and she hadn't eaten in several days. She ran a hand over her cheek, pretended it was Simon's, and began to change into her work clothes. It was taking her longer to get ready these days; she just didn't have the energy to move any faster than a crawl. As she walked to the city office, she passed dozens of people moving quickly and silently with their heads down, as was the way of the Xanites. None of them acknowledged her. She felt a pang for the corridors of Atlantis, where people nodded and said hello as she walked by, sometimes even stopped to have a conversation.

As she sat at her desk that day, reading the same sentence over and over again, Elizabeth's mind began to unravel, a hundred frayed and faded ribbons coming off their spools. The ache in her chest where she missed Atlantis became a thousand times sharper until it felt like something was crushing her ribcage. She couldn't stop shaking, and then it seemed like a very good idea to hit her head repeatedly against the desk. Maybe she could knock herself unconscious and finally get some sleep, but the pressure just kept building until it felt like her chest was going to explode. Screaming, she clawed at the exposed skin of her arm and smiled when she saw the red streaks that appeared beneath her fingernails. She could hear rapid footsteps approaching her door. Good, she thought, scratching viciously at her face. Perhaps they would restrain her, hold her so she couldn't hurt herself. But she only felt a needle in her arm, and then a slow warmth spreading throughout her whole body, pulling her down into unconsciousness.

She woke up in a hospital room, four white walls, a bed, a door, no windows. A faceless doctor came by to check on her, and informed her that she would be staying there for observation until they were satisfied that she wasn't a danger to herself anymore. He spoke directly to her, something no one had done in almost a week, and she begged him not to go.

"I have other patients," he said apologetically. "A nurse will be by in a few minutes with some food. You are malnourished. Do eat."

The nurse gave her a bowl of the same mush she'd long since given up on eating for breakfast. Elizabeth ate a spoonful, mostly to be courteous, and then put the bowl aside. The food had no color, no flavor, and the texture of mud. It did nothing for her. She didn't crave food; she craved stimulation, craved noise and color and touch and tastes that weren't sawdust and smells that weren't antiseptic. The screaming feeling began rising in her gut again, and she slammed her head back against the wall as hard as she could. Pain exploded in the back of her skull, but it felt good, and the sparks that flickered in front of her eyes were the prettiest thing she'd seen in a long time. She beat her arms against the side of the bed until she could feel the flesh turning to pulp, and God it felt good. She kept hitting and clawing and scratching until an orderly came in with a needle and sedated her again.

They brought her food and water several times a day, bowl after bowl of tasteless mush that she didn't eat. She tried a spoonful once, out of boredom more than anything else, but it tasted funny, and she suspected they were drugging it to keep her calm. She didn't care. She just pushed herself into a corner of the bed, vaguely hungry but not enough to do anything about it, and prodded at the dark purple bruises on her forearms. Her stomach hurt and her head ached and she felt sick from the drugs. Lying back down, she covered her face with her arm. She didn't feel like sitting up. She didn't feel like eating. She didn't even feel like breathing.

They put her on an IV drip after that, presumably containing some sort of glucose solution. Gingerly, she untaped the tubing and pulled the cannula out, watching in mild fascination as a fat drop of blood welled up over the puncture mark. The surface tension broke, and it dripped down her forearm and onto the sheets, leaving a bright red spot to mar the white perfection. Setting the tubing aside, she curled up in a ball. She didn't want the fluids. Why prolong the inevitable? She was going to die anyway, waste away to nothing. Because without Atlantis, she had no reason to live.

The nurse found her, and told the doctor, who came back with a new IV kit and some straps. They gave her another line and cuffed her to the bed so she couldn't yank it out. She didn't fight them. There was no point. Elizabeth Weir was gone. They could try all they wanted to keep her body alive, but it was just a shell. She drifted in and out of consciousness for a while, days, weeks, possibly months; she couldn't tell. Occasionally there were other people in the room, dim figures dressed in white, but they never touched her or spoke to her. She heard them talking a few times, saying something about a vitamin deficiency causing her symptoms. She almost laughed. The Xanites truly didn't understand, did they? She wished she could explain it to them, but she didn't have the energy to form the words or even the thoughts. It was only a matter of time before her body just shut down let her spirit go.

Perhaps it would go back to Atlantis. She hoped so.

And then there was someone different in the room with her, and a voice was speaking rapidly. It wasn't the slow, measured monotone the Xanites favored; it rose and fell and quickened and slowed and misspoke a few times. It was a living voice. A Lantean voice.

"John?" she asked, her throat dry and painful, vocal cords raw from disuse.

"I'm right here, Elizabeth," Sheppard replied, his strong arms gently lifting her and placing her on a stretcher. "I'm right here."

"Hold my hand?" Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew it sounded pathetic, but she asked anyway.

"Sure thing." His strong, leathery hand found her frail one and squeezed it reassuringly as the _Daedalus_ beamed them on board. She drifted in and out after that, but he must have stayed by her side the whole way back, because every time she came to, his hand was there, a warm, living human hand. He would never know how much it meant to her.

When they reached Atlantis, the _Daedalus_ beamed her straight to the infirmary, where Carson Beckett and his medical team were waiting for her. As she smelled the familiar scent of the ocean breeze, Elizabeth's eyes glistened with tears as she realized she was back in the city. Back in Atlantis. Her home. For the first time in far, far too long, she felt something stirring inside her. Something alive.

"You all right, love?" Carson asked, seeing the tears.

"It's good to be home," she whispered. Her voice still hurt; she hadn't said more than a few words a day in God knew how long.

Face creased in concern, Carson began examining her, hands gently palpating her abdomen and auscultating her chest, then feeling her lymph nodes for swelling. Thankfully, he said nothing about the scratches on her skin, or the bruises on her arms. He helped her sit up, and warmed the stethoscope in his hand before he listened to her heartbeat. A nurse came by to draw blood, but she was so careful with the needle that Elizabeth barely felt it. After he'd viewed the results of her exam and lab work, Carson insisted that she stay in the infirmary for a few days, saying she'd lost a great deal of weight and had numerous nutritional deficiencies.

"If you don't mind my asking," he said uncertainly, "what did they do to you over there?"

"Nothing," she replied, shaking her head. Her throat was feeling a little better. "That's just it. Nothing. I had food and water, a place to sleep, but … They're not like us, Carson. They don't need human contact the way we do; in fact, they see it as unnecessary, inappropriate sometimes. They don't talk to each other, don't socialize, don't shake hands. They hardly even use names."

Carson nodded sympathetically and set a bowl of broth in front of her. "Severe social isolation can have a detrimental effect on a person's health. It would explain the weight loss too; babies who aren't touched enough tend to have high rates of infant mortality. I've never seen the same effect in an adult before, but I suppose it's possible."

"Carson?"

"Aye?"

"Please don't go."

"I won't." So he sat with her while she had her soup, telling her stories about his days as an ER physician in Edinburgh. It made eating easier, his soothing voice easing the warm liquid down her throat. Then he hugged her, told her how glad he was that she was back. That made her smile, and it occurred to her that she hadn't smiled in a very long time.

She smiled again the next morning when she woke up and saw John Sheppard sitting next to her bed. He was holding her hand, just like he had on the _Daedalus_. He talked to her while she ate her breakfast in slow, measured bites, and while she didn't remember much of what he was saying, the sound of a living, human voice speaking to her was like water after a month in the desert, and she let it soak through her skin and permeate every cell of her body.

Apparently Carson had told Sheppard and the others what happened on Xanos, because they always made sure one of them was with her. Teyla came in the mornings, usually arriving before Elizabeth woke up. She told stories of the Athosian hunt, tales of bravery and survival against the odds in an uncaring wilderness.

In the early afternoon, Rodney stopped by with a chessboard and a lot of complaints about how the city had gone to hell in a hand basket in her absence. She played a crafty queen's gambit as she marveled at how much she had missed listening to him whine. After he made a fatal error in rook placement, she smiled, checkmated his king, and let his long, convoluted explanation of exactly how she'd cheated wash over her like a cool breeze.

Carson usually took a break in the middle of the day to come see her. They ate lunch together, and he always hugged her before he headed back to work. She buried her face in his shirt, soaking in the feeling of human closeness and letting it sate that strange hunger she'd felt since being stranded.

Ronon came by a few times in the evenings, and while he didn't talk much or touch her, just having his presence in the room was comforting. She sometimes fell asleep with him beside her bed, a silent sentinel keeping watch over her.

But Sheppard's visits were her favorite. He couldn't come as often as the others, since he was busy helping to run the city, but when he did, he brought jokes and chocolate bars and that odd quality of Sheppard-ness that she'd never been able to define but had missed terribly nonetheless. He spent an entire afternoon trying to explain football to her, and she spent the next afternoon trying to explain North African geopolitics to him. And when they ran out of words, he sat on the bed next to her and let her fall asleep with her head resting on his shoulder.

The day Carson discharged her, she changed out of her white hospital scrubs and into her favorite bright red shirt and canvas trousers. With no particular destination in mind, she began walking the corridors of Atlantis, and people smiled and greeted her as she passed. Two scientists approached her and asked for permission to conduct a survey of the ocean floor. After granting them permission and suggesting they enlist the help of Dr. Rickards from oceanography, she stopped by the cafeteria for an apple and lingered a minute, listening to the buzz of excited conversation.

"Just an apple, Dr. Weir?" Jennifer Keller, one of Carson's subordinates, asked, eyebrows raised in concern. "Shouldn't you be eating a little more than that?"

"I'll be back for lunch," Elizabeth promised.

Eventually, she found herself out on the balcony, gazing at the ocean spread out before her. The scent of salt water filled her nose, and she could feel the spray on her skin. Brisk sea wind rubbed at her cheeks, and she smiled. God, how she'd missed this place …

"Real pretty, isn't it?" Sheppard asked, coming up behind her.

"I'd almost forgotten what it looks like," she admitted. "Nothing like this on Xanos. Everything's dim and gray. I don't know how I survived it."

He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. "Well, it's good to have you back, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth nodded, and tears began forming in her eyes. Without her friends, her family, without Atlantis, she wasn't truly alive, just a body with a beating heart. But now she was back among people who cared about her, people who said hello to her in the halls, who played chess with her and told her jokes, who held her hand and hugged her, people who called her Elizabeth or Dr. Weir and met her for lunch.

She was home.

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><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> This piece was inspired in part by two things. The first was the _Law and Order: SVU _episode "Solitary" and my subsequent research into the topic of solitary confinement. The second was an incident in the early 20th century, where pediatrician Dr. Luther Emmett Holt asserted that parents were spoiling their infants with too much touch. Parents immediately began giving their children less affection, and the result was a rather dramatic increase in infant mortality. Most of the symptoms Elizabeth displays during her time on Xanos are accurate to the best of my knowledge, although I had to make a few inferences since I could not find any material describing the effects on adults of the specific conditions she was subjected to. Feedback is always appreciated, especially if you can tell me what some of the story's weaker points are. Don't be afraid to criticize; we writers thrive on it.


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